Manthorpe: Japan boosts defence of outer islands to deter China

Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun04.27.2012

Behind a facade of calm and positive relations with China, Japan is deeply suspicious of Beijing’s maritime ambitions and is beefing up the defence of its outer islands. Japan’s army, known as the Ground Self-Defense Forces, has strengthened its presence on the four most westerly inhabited islands in the Japanese archipelago: Ishigaki, Yonaguni, Miyako and Iriomotejima.

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Behind a facade of calm and positive relations with China, Japan is deeply suspicious of Beijing’s maritime ambitions and is beefing up the defence of its outer islands.

Japan’s army, known as the Ground Self-Defense Forces, has strengthened its presence on the four most westerly inhabited islands in the Japanese archipelago: Ishigaki, Yonaguni, Miyako and Iriomotejima.

At the same time, in the last few weeks Japan has moved to assert its sovereignty over nearly 100 isolated islands, many uninhabited, which form the basis of its exclusive economic zone under the international Law of the Sea.

But some of these islands are also claimed by China, which has become more assertive in pressing its case with the growth of its modernized and increasingly sophisticated navy.

Perennially the most contentious in these territorial disputes between Tokyo and Beijing are the Japanese owned and administered Senkaku Islands, which the Chinese call Diaoyutai.

This dispute has been relatively muted for two years since a diplomatic crisis when Japanese coast guards arrested a Chinese trawler captain for illegal fishing and ramming their ships off the Senkakus.

But in the last two weeks tensions have risen again after a wealthy Chinese businessman offered to buy the islands for $430 million from the Japanese family that owns them.

This aroused the ire of the ultranationalist and xenophobic governor of Tokyo, Shinataro Ishihara, who announced plans for his metropolitan government to buy the islands for $500 million.

The furore has troubled the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government led by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, which is accused by Ishihara of not being tough enough with Beijing over territorial disputes and displaying an attitude of appeasement which might encourage China to take the contested islands by force.

To deflect these criticisms the DPJ’s policy chief and former foreign minister who has a reputation of being wary of China’s ambitions, Seiji Maehara, said the national government should consider buying the Senkakus from the Kurihara family that owns them.

Since coming to power in 2009 the DPJ government has attempted to cool the Beijing-Tokyo rhetoric, which was especially pyrotechnic during the 2001-2006 tenure of Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

But behind the public smiles and seemingly harmonious meetings between leaders and senior ministers from Tokyo and Beijing which produce communiques loaded with endless platitudes, the Japanese government is increasingly frustrated with China.

Of more immediate importance for Japan than the Senkaku Islands is the dispute over the Shirakaba/Chunxiao gas fields under the median line between Japan and China in the East China Sea.

Beijing and Tokyo signed a joint development agreement in 2008, but the Chinese government at first deferred and in 2009 suspended talks on bilateral exploitation of the fields.

The Noda government suspects Beijing is intent on unilateral development of the field.

Despite Ishihara’s criticism that the national government is appeasing Beijing, Noda is being far more assertive than his predecessors.

He aroused the ire of Beijing last month when the Japanese government sought to affirm its sovereignty by assigning names to 39 uninhabited and previously unnamed islands that are, with about 60 other isolated islands, the basis for Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

North Korea’s failed test of an intercontinental rocket on April 13 provided Tokyo with a handy reason to increase the anti-missile and radar defences of its four most westerly islands.

But Japan’s army has also formed a new rapid response air defence group that can quickly be deployed to threatened islands.

A new coastal surveillance unit has been formed, which doubles as a first responder military unit to defend uninhabited Japanese islands.

Last December Japan’s army, navy and air force conducted a joint exercise with United States forces based on the premise of Japan having to recapture one of its southern islands from invading forces.

China’s incoming president and Communist party leader Xi Jinping has got involved in the disputes with Japan and on Tuesday warned Tokyo to act carefully when dealing with matters of “core interest” to China.

Beijing usually applies that phrase “core interest” to disputed territories like Tibet, Xinjiang, the South China Sea and Taiwan; it’s interpreted to mean issues on which China would go to war to defend its interests.

A report on Thursday by the always sober-minded and cautious institute Oxford Analytica, based at Britain’s Oxford University, concluded its assessment of the Sino-Japanese situation with the stark sentence “The possibility of armed conflict is real.”

jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com

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Manthorpe: Japan boosts defence of outer islands to deter China

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